After Pope Benedict’s Resignation, NY Times Unleashes Record Hate

On the attack against the Catholic Church: NY Times' Bill Keller,writer Rachel Donadio, and professional Church crank Jason Berry

The announcement that Pope Benedict XVI would be resigning his position has apparently provided the New York Times with yet another opportunity to rail against the Catholic Church for not conforming to its politically correct, secularist worldview.

Ever since Benedict's big news, the Times – the world's leading anti-Catholic newspaper – has discharged a seemingly endless stream of Church bashers, bigots, and malcontents to advance their deep animus towards the Catholic Church.

Here is a brief rundown of the Times' attacks from the past week:

Rachel Donadio and Elisabetta Povoledo: Although Danadio and Povoledo's piece was supposed to be a straight news story about the Pope's announcement, the pair could not help themselves from wringing their hands and editorializing that, unfortunately, "[t]here are no plausible candidates who would move on issues like ending celibacy for priests, or the ordination of women." The two writers missed the real story here but surely pleased their editors back in New York.

Bill Keller: After comparing the Catholic Church to a Fortune 500 company that is "incoherently managed, resistant to the modernizing forces of the Internet age, [and] tainted by scandal and corruption," perpetual Church critic and angry ex-Catholic Keller finally gets to the real reasons that the Catholic Church so upsets him. "[O]rdain women and let priests marry," proclaims Keller – surely music to the ears of other Church haters.

Garry Wills: The debunked and discredited "anti-Catholic Catholic" fired up his usual bile in an brutal op-ed reminiscent of something out the 19th-century Know Nothing movement. (Not surprisingly, the Times just published a very favorable review this past Sunday of Wills' latest Church-bashing book.)

John Patrick Shanley: The bigoted director of the film Doubt – who has actually been sued over a "violent S&M-fueled sexual relationship with a young actress" – makes no effort to hide his contempt for the Catholic Church. His nasty op-ed, with the title, "Farewell to an Uninspiring Pope," grossly smears Benedict as "utterly bereft of charm," "tone-deaf," "a protector of priests who abused children," being "a member of Hitler Youth," and having "no use for women." And that's just the first paragraph. Just imagine the Times printing a similar angry, irrational screed directed at a Jewish, Muslim, or other religious leader.

Jason Berry: When a psychologist for the anti-Catholic group SNAP was arrested with over 100 images of kiddie porn, Church-bashing author Jason Berry wrote a passionate letter on behalf of the pervy doc. Berry then defended his actions by saying, "I'd do it again." However, Berry's rank hypocrisy did not disqualify him in the eyes of the Times from lecturing the Church about how Pope Benedict can "right some of the wrongs of the recent past" with respect to the abuse scandals from decades ago.

As we have stated several times before, the New York Times is utterly obsessed with the Catholic Church. Its never-ending fixation with the decades-old scandals in the Church – while ignoring the scandals happening today in local public schools right in its own backyard – reveals that it is not really the sexual abuse of children that bothers the Times. What bothers the Times is that the Catholic Church does not adhere to the paper's own radical, secularist worldview.

Comments

These people are all shrivelled up with hatred. I wonder if they would have the guts to unleash a tirade of abuse and hatred against Islam. They are high and mighty and ever so vocal when they turn on a religion of peace. There's no doubt that in time they will regret it…….

I’d like to look at the piece in the New York Times by non-overly-religious religion writer Rachel Donadio, referenced and linked-to by DP in the above article.

Trying to get out a Memo to the cadres with talking-points that might be developed, Donadio goes for the idea that by resigning, Benedict has profoundly weakened the ‘divine’ and ‘infallible’ authority of the Papacy (so, I guess, a Pope might now have to be as dependent upon daily opinion polls and the NYT editorial page as any American big-league politician). Donadio is not unhappy about this. Not hardly.

Might this all not “undermine the authority of the Church’s teaching”? (with most of which Donadio seems quite unhappy).

Despite the fact that even she admits that Canon Law actually has legal justification for a papal retirement in place, she gamely seeks out whomever can be quoted as saying that the whole thing is “confusion” and that “the implications of Benedict’s act remain unclear”. Be of good hope all ye who want to see the Pope and Cardinals made to parade like overdressed donkeys in dunce-caps and recite their abject failures in front of the ruthless and Correct Red Guards of today! Preferably, I imagine, in St. Peter’s Square.

Benedict has transformed “an office with an aura of divinity into something far more human”, she says. When God has rather clearly established and sustained your Office, then – yes – I guess you can say there is some rub-off that produces an “aura of divinity”, but the emphasis is on the aura, not on the divinity. This has not been emphasis prevalent among the Abuse-niks, for whom the Pope has to be ‘divine’ because the priest who ‘works for’ the Pope has to be sorta ‘divine’ because that’s the only way to explain with a straight face how thousands of instances of abuse (plus the invisible ‘9’ cases for every one reported case) took place for so long and yet nobody but nobody among all the relevant adults noticed anything.

One Professor Pennington is brought forward to address the somewhat sophomorically-posed question: how can you be infallible one day and fallible the next? The answer to that was clear long before Vatican 2: the Pope is only infallible when defining matters of faith and dogma in the formal ex cathedra setting and in no other way (I clearly recall as a Catholic grade-schooler working my way through that formula after one of the Sisters put it up on the board). And on top of that, the ex cathedra status has its own requirements having to do with the cooperation of other ranking prelates. Clearly then, once Benedict is retired the elements necessary for ‘infallibility’ will not be in place. It’s the process – not the individual – that achieves infallibility.

But Pennington knows enough to dance with those what brung him, and struggles manfully to make a mountain worthy of the New York Times out of a molehill (also characteristic of the Times). What’s his status? What’s his title? What are his powers (can no longer leap tall buildings in a single bound?)? These questions, too, seem sophomoric even to a Catholic grade-schooler from back in the day: Benedict retains the fullness of priesthood and the ‘powers’ that go with it. And maybe can get your parking tickets taken care of in Vatican City – maybe. The power resides in the Petrine Office, not the individual.

Diarmaid MacCullough also does a turn here. I have discussed his thousand-page history of Christianity before: he very much wants the Roman Catholic Church to lighten-up and loosen-up; yet all the examples of Christian groups that have done just that are ‘historical’ (i.e., the groups have ceased to exist or the groups got blended into other groups and lost identity and cohesion). He never does seem to notice the problems in his basic framing of the matter.

We can have a Queen Mother, opines MacCullough, but can we have a Pope Father? Cute, but sophomoric. You can have a Dowager Empress – just as, in Maggie Smith’s superbly-limned character, you can have a Dowager Countess of Grantham: she doesn’t run the estate but she’s great dinner company and always has some worthwhile thoughts. Donadio is eager to opine that “the very idea of a retired pope meant that the title has lost some of its luster”. Well, actually, she writes that “some say” that. Perhaps some furniture wax or car wax can restore the shine. And how much “luster” may we presume the Papacy, in the Times’ estimation, to have in the first place?

Pennington suddenly reappears: even though a ranking canon-lawyer has explained rather clearly how infallibility works, Pennington (a professor of ecclesiastical and legal history at Catholic University of America) still dutifully whines that he can’t see how anybody can be infallible one day and fallible the next. The idea that the infallibility doesn’t inhere in the individual seems beyond him. How did he get through Catholic grade-school?

Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, opines that “the pope is not like sort of a God-king who goes on to the very end”. Well duh. The Petrine Office is the key here, not the individual. Nor has Williams’s own Anglicanism fared well of late, having embraced MacCullough’s vision of embracing the loosey-goosey and trusting in your God or your personal pet-rock that it will all work out OK in the end.

Donadio is looking for reinforcement from all these gentle-puffs: if a Pope through retirement becomes ‘relative’ (as opposed to ‘absolute’) then the doctrines he implemented become equally ‘relative’. And thus – I imagine she’s going-for here – then ‘doctrine’ becomes ‘relative’ and maybe plastic and more like play-dough. This would bring the Church – in the Times’ vision – into the great sandbox of modernistic Western civilization, where everybody is playing with the play-dough and making nicey shapes … the Church could get its own pail and shovel in the corner of the sandbox currently inhabited by MacCullough and Williams and Pennington and the games can go on from there.

Also, by stepping into the sandbox, the Church will finally get a decent grade from the Times in the Plays Well With Others category.

Somehow the Church got through Celestine V’s retirement so I can’t see the cause for brouhaha.

It's worth reiterating that the NYT's papal reporting and editorial have been criticized and derided by other more intelligent newspapers, like the Wall Street Journal, and even by the Washington Post.

It's not so much the Pope as it is just the Catholic Church in general. While all organized religion is a sham, the Catholic Church is particularly nefarious because of it's centralized leadership, so of course the secular-minded will target the head of the snake. Write all you want about how Christianity does good for the world, but the reality is science has proven that everything our inward-focused religious insitutions teach us is to close your mind, close your eyes, close your ears, and simply obey. I find that to be rather un-American.

I came across the following post regarding the Sophomoric Times and its anti-Catholic obsession on the website of a more reputable newspaper. I was unaware of this and can't vouch for its validity, but, judging by the poster's other comments, I would imagine there is some credence to this:

"The actual abuse by a few homosexual liberal priests was during the 1960s and the 1980s. The reason it was blown up into a "scandal" by newspapers such as the New York Times and Boston Globe (both owned by the Sulzberger family) during the 2000s was because the Vatican refused to support the Zionist Iraq War.

Presenting all priests as pedophiles was the revenge, while not focusing on the higher percentage of abuses in any other institution in society. After WWII, Jews and their allies, liberal WASPs, have been working frantically to finish off the Catholic Church and at local level, Catholic culture, as their last great enemy in the West (just like they view Islam in the East). So anything goes, when it comes to propaganda, whether it’s about abortion, marriage, etc.

The case with Jimmy Savile and the BBC/NHS shows how, if people wanted to, they could manufacture a supposedly all encompassing scandal which portrays all people involved with nursing or all media people as pedophiles and memes could be imparted into popular discourse where "BBC" and "pedophile" are always mentioned together… but there has to be a political impetus."

Islam is SO "dark ages" and violent towards women and children, practices Sharia Law (murder, cutting off hands…dark ages stuff, will KILL homosexuals!), yet the NYT etc. won't speak of Islam's not wanting to join the secular ranks and modernize. Fear of death, eh!? Like the cartoonist. The Catholic Church does not kill homosexuals…or anybody. The Church doesn't cut off hands. Gee, they're just…celibate?

Another interesting angle that might get the right media attention is using the faithful Muslims (not radicalized Islamists) voice to join in defense of the Catholic Church (our Church more closely mirrors their conservative values than any other). There are a few articles about moderate Muslims and organizations, and even CAIR (not so moderate!) reacting against the SNL, and other disgusting representations of and attacks against our Lord, Jesus; also one of their most beloved prophets.

Meanwhile, I am making contact with local women religious orders to see if I can get a bite from any of them. Maybe I can recover some old community organization abilities (I was a watered-down [unconvinced] 60s "radical" in a former life.) There must have been some reason God wanted me to test those waters back then?

Our nuns won't be "on a bus". Our nuns will be riding red, black, white and pale war horses-

"…taking crude shots at Jews in Hollywood"?? Aww, the poor loves! Hilarious hypocrisy from the New Yuck Times. In the 2 days after the Pope's resignation the sophomoric rag was positively wallowing in anti-Catholic vitriol like a pig in you-know-what. Of course, that was editorial. Seth MacFarlane was jesting. But the NYT lost its sense of humor long ago – along with its credibility.

I wonder how the left will split along ideological lines to deflate the growing Church in Africa (and Asia)?

In my mind, the only benefit the NYT can hope for from this article is to alert their loyal minions to the likely divide ahead ragarding their current battle plans. It isn't as easy to attack non-whites as is it European-Caucasians.

Quote: "When I read that The New York Times suggested one of the major problems Benedict faced was same-sex marriage, I burst out laughing."
When a newspaper becomes a manifesto rag, and seeks to form public opinion rather than inform the public, it invariably becomes laughable.